The present invention pertains generally to cold water dispersible and/or cold water soluble starch compositions and, in particular, to cold water dispersible or cold water soluble starch compositions which contain a glycoside surfactant in an amount sufficient to impart enhanced dispersibility or solubilization characteristics to the resulting starch composition.
Starch materials are, of course, well known and readily available and find wide use in a variety of food and industrial applications. As is also known, such starch materials can exist and be marketed and used in a variety of forms including, for example, in non-gelatinized, cold water insoluble granular form, in cold water soluble, non-gelatinized granular form and in gelatinized (or "pregelatinized"), non-granular cold water soluble form.
In many of its food and industrial applications, starch usage entails at some point in the overall process a step in which the starch material is dispersed and/or dissolved in an aqueous medium such as water, milk, etc. In the case of non-gelatinized, cold water insoluble granular starches (commonly called "cook-up" starches) such material typically is initially dispersed or slurried in a cold aqueous medium and the resulting aqueous mixture (i.e., slurry or dispersion) is heated (or cooked) to gelatinize and solubilize the granular starch material. In the case of cold water soluble granular or pregelatinized (i.e.,non-granular) starch materials, cooking is not necessary for solubilization and aqueous solutions of these starch materials can be formed by simply admixing the starch with cold water.
A problem which can commonly occur, particularly in the absence of fairly intense mixing or agitation, upon initial contact of the various starch materials with the aqueous medium is the formation of difficult-to-dissolve (or disperse) lumps or agglomerated gels of the starch material. This problem is particularly pronounced in the case of readily cold water soluble pregelatinized starch materials and, according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,395 (issued Mar. 11, 1986 to Richard E. Rudin), can be mitigated by coating the pregelatinized starch material with from about 0.05 to about 20 weight percent of a food grade emulsifier. Food grade emulsifiers suggested for use in accordance with the Rudin patent are those selected from the group consisting of propylene glycol monoesters, distilled monoglycerides and sodium stearyl lactylate hydrophillic ethoxylated sorbitan monoesters, dextrose, maltodextrin, lecithin, sucrose monoglycerides, diglycerides and mixtures thereof.